Radio România Internațional

Tag: projects

  • November 3, 2023

    November 3, 2023


    STRIKE Romanian public health insurance personnel have suspended relations with the public indefinitely, because their salaries have not been increased for over 6 years. The protest disrupts services to patients and it might jeopardise the disbursement of expenses incurred by healthcare service providers, the head of the National Trade Union Bloc Dumitru Costin explained. He said the National Health Insurance Agencys budget can cover the requested pay raises, but that the measure must be endorsed in Parliament, where a bill in this respect has been pending for a long period and is currently stuck in the Chamber of Deputies. The health minister Alexandru Rafila said suspending the provision of healthcare services is unacceptable, and that he hoped for a dialogue between the management and the staff of the National Health Insurance Agency.



    BUDGET The ruling coalition have started talks on next years public budget. The government has approved a memorandum drawn up by the finance ministry, which lists the significant public investment projects on which the budget will be based. The transportation ministry has the largest number of projects in the list, i.e. 108 projects in various implementation stages, which means this ministry will receive the largest appropriations in the 2024 budget.



    HOSTAGES The Romanian foreign ministry announced that checks conducted by the Romanian authorities based on the information provided by Israel indicate that another person with dual (Romanian and Israeli) citizenship and living in Israel is a hostage in the Gaza Strip. The foreign ministry also announced that the Romanian Embassy in Tel Aviv and the Romanian Consulate in Haifa are in touch with the Israeli authorities. So far 4 people with Romanian and Israeli citizenship are known to be held hostage by the Hamas terrorists.



    ISRAEL The US secretary of state Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on Friday morning to persuade Israel to ensure the protection of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip. This is Blinkens second trip to the Middle East since the Hamas Islamists attacked Israel on October 7. International mass media report that the US diplomacy chief will have meetings with the Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, and with members of his security cabinet. From Israel, Blinken is to travel next to neighbouring Jordan. Meanwhile, Israel announced that its forces have surrounded Gaza City, the largest urban centre in Gaza and previously controlled by Hamas.



    BOOK FAIR The Gaudeamus Radio Romania Book Fair invites book lovers to Timişoara, a European Capital of Culture in 2023. The fair takes place until Sunday, and it brings together scores of publishers presenting their most recent releases, best-sellers, special offers and discounts. Todays most eagerly awaited event is the launch of a volume of dialogues between Robert Şerban and the contemporary Romanian poet Şerban Foarţă. Q&A sessions with writers, roundtables and book signing events are also scheduled. The Timisoara-based writer Patricia Lidia released a volume entitled “Adventures in Brancusis World,” an event that complements the exhibition devoted to the great Romanian-born sculptor opened these days at the National Art Museum in Timişoara. (AMP)


  • Funky Citizens

    Funky Citizens

    Funky Citizens is a meeting place
    for the citizens who will not settle for the status quo, but understand the
    role they play in a democracy and often get involved in decision-making
    processes. The organisation’s strongest weapons are the initiatives that use
    technology, data and communication-based advocacy, and civic education. The NGO
    already has notable experience in encouraging the citizens who dream of an
    urban space with a coherent idea of development, in which citizens get involved
    in defining their shared space and improving their life standards.


    Elena Calistru, a member of the
    European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), and the president and co-founder
    of the organisation, tells us how it all started:


    Elena Calistru: Around
    2011 – 2012 we realised that Romania lacked a movement or organisation that
    made citizen involvement desirable for people, especially in areas that are
    rather difficult to understand. We started with a project where we monitored
    the spending of public funds, we monitored the national budget actually, which
    we tried to make comprehensible for citizens. We worked on the assumption that
    people would like to get involved in public life, but that they often find this
    kind of information very difficult to understand, and that some effort is required
    to explain to them certain basic aspects, like how legislation works, how
    institutions work and so on. This is how Funky Citizens was born.


    We asked Elena Calistru whether it
    was easy to find members:


    Elena Calistru: Obviously
    there were not a lot of citizens willing to get involved, and as an
    organisation we didn’t imagine we will get millions of people checking on local
    budgets. But we do believe that, if we get involved, things will change, and
    judging by the response we have seen since our establishment in 2012, I would
    say there are more and more people interested in what happens at local and
    national level and more and more people are getting involved in our activities,
    are donating funds, are reading our surveys.


    How can a citizen get involved in
    public life?


    Elena Calistru: Most
    often, the first step is to get informed. It sounds like a cliché, but it is
    true. Information is power, information is easier nowadays thanks to the
    internet and finding out how we can contact our MP or mayor is just a click
    away. But we tell people that citizen involvement is like sports: there are
    several levels. Ideally, we should all exercise for at least 30 minutes a day. In
    terms of citizenship, this means checking from time to time what the mayor has
    done, what parliament has done, what the government has done, and stay up to
    date on events. And obviously go vote. Then, just like in sports, there is the
    option of exercising weekly, maybe take up a sport, or go cycling. This would
    translate into signing a petition, for example, or writing to our MPs on a
    topic of interest. And the third level, the ‘professional athlete’ so to say,
    is running a marathon. This may mean joining a citizen intervention
    organisation, or challenging the local budget. We have these rights, as
    citizens.


    The number of participants in Funky
    Citizens projects varies, our guest explained, and during election periods it
    may reach thousands of volunteers. Elena Calistru, the president and co-founder
    of the organisation, also spoke about some of its most recent initiatives:


    Elena Calistru: In the
    years to come we will have 2 major challenges: one of them is to expand our
    work at local level. This is something we are already doing, we started last
    year, we are trying to go to local communities and organise training sessions
    on how local budgets are made, on how citizens can get involved, and we work
    with partner journalists. The second challenge has to do with our presence in
    the European Economic and Social Committee and other bodies, our organisation
    has been working for a while now in international projects, especially in
    Central and Eastern Europe, I have been a member of the Committee since last
    year. We are trying to make the voice of several Romanian NGOs better heard in European
    institutions.


    Whether we speak about European
    funds for national or local projects, when we look at the efficiency of
    spending in Romania the common element is a lack of impact. The main reasons
    for that are the absence of mechanisms to identify long-term development needs,
    prioritising financial needs based on political criteria rather than actual
    needs, and the waste of public money through corruption, fraud or poor
    management. (A.M.P.)

  • Economic support for the Republic of Moldova

    Economic support for the Republic of Moldova

    An avowed supporter of Chișinău, Bucharest last week took another step towards helping the Republic of Moldova (an ex-Soviet state with a majority Romanian speaking population) on its European accession path, which is the only way able to ensure the republics stability, prosperity, economic and social development. The Romanian government on Friday approved the agreement on the non-reimbursable financial aid worth 100 million Euros agreed upon with the Moldovan government in a joint meeting last month.



    The prime minister Nicolae Ciuca explains: “In this way, the non-reimbursable financial assistance of 100 million Euros can be accessed by the Moldovan Government, an agreement that supports the Republic of Moldovas efforts for development and reforms, and also its European accession efforts.



    The money is to be used for building water and sewerage networks and for rehabilitating educational and cultural institutions, especially in the rural areas. The projects that will be financed with this money will create new jobs and will be able to restore people’s confidence in the perspective of building a future at home, show the Moldovan authorities. This agreement is, practically, the instrument through which we intend to support the firm, solid connection of the Republic of Moldova to the European space, through roads and bridges, through electricity and gas networks, through rural development projects, the Romanian prime minister explained.



    At the same time, PM Ciucă went on to say, the agreements aimed at building a bridge over the Prut River, at Ungheni, which will connect with the Târgu Neamţ – Iaşi – Ungheni highway, respectively at consolidating the border road bridge between Galați and Giurgiulești have a strong practical and symbolic significance on the relationship between Romania and the Republic of Moldova.



    Bucharest’s support for Chisinau is channeled into several directions. One direction, is, for instance, the Memorandum of Understanding between the Governments of Romania and the Republic of Moldova on cooperation in the field of energy security, as well as the agreement that provides for the reduction of roaming tariffs and tariffs for international telephone calls between the two countries. Another instance of support is the decision of the Romanian Education Ministry to grant 2,550 scholarships for pre-university and university education to the Republic of Moldova, annually, until 2026. Official data show that Romania is the first trading partner of the Republic of Moldova and one of its main investors. The volume of trade for 2021 stands at 2.4 billion USD, a record in bilateral relations, and the policy of the two sister countries is to fully turn to good account the huge potential for cooperation. (LS)

  • Protection of sturgeons in the Danube Basin

    Protection of sturgeons in the Danube Basin

    The Danube River and the Black Sea are still home to some of the worlds most important wild sturgeon populations. Unfortunately, over the past decades, these migratory fish populations have dramatically dwindled because of barriers created by man. Dams and hydropower plants have divided the natural habitats of these fish species. Furthermore, fishing, pollution and the destruction of habitats have caused imbalances of the marine ecosystem and sturgeons have consequently been much affected.



    Out of 6 species, only 4 have managed to survive, namely the beluga or huso huso, the sterlet, the sevruga sturgeon and the Russian sturgeon, which are on the list of endangered species on the Red List of Endangered Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Fishing of sturgeons was first forbidden in Romania in 2006 for a period of 10 years, and in 2016, the ban on sturgeon fishing was extended by another 5 years.



    In order to contribute to the conservation of sturgeons, WWF – World Wildlife Fund Romania has implemented various projects approaching the issue of overfishing, which is the main direct threat to the survival of the last wild sturgeon populations in the Danube. WWF Romania experts say that more involvement is needed and a wider European cooperation. Also, mechanisms need to be created for fishermen to be supported, for them to be able to obtain revenues from alternative sources and to be involved in activities related to the conservation, protection of habitats and the preservation of essential fish migration routes.



    At present, in Romania, commercial fishing of sturgeon is banned, as well as the sale of sturgeon meat and caviar from the wild sturgeon in the Danube. Cristina Munteanu, a national manager of the WWF Romania project, has more: “Sturgeons are still most affected. We do not have the exact number of individuals in the species remaining in the Danube and the Black Sea, because these partial monitoring methods are rather expensive and require a lot of time. However, the knowledge we have following this partial monitoring shows that the sturgeon population is not big enough to allow commercial fishing. The ban on sturgeon fishing continues until 2021 and afterwards a decision will have to be made, in the next year, based on the latest scientific data which is available to us.



    WWF Romania cooperates with the World Sturgeon Conservation Society, a global network of researchers, together with which it drafted a pan-European action plan for this fish species. The plan was adopted at the end of 2018 by the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats and it will serve as a framework for all the European countries located in the regions with sturgeon populations. Last year, 10 European countries: Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Ukraine initiated a project for a 3-year period, for the conservation of endangered migratory fish species in the Danube basin.



    Here is Cristina Munteanu with details: “The project is funded by the EU through the Danube Transnational Programme and it was launched last June. It is meant to identify common methods to set up sturgeon habitats, to make demonstrations of how to increase the fish population, to identify methods to set up fish farms with the purpose of repopulating the Danube and the Black Sea with sturgeon. Based on the analysis of current policies well eventually make some recommendations on how to include the conservation of these species in various plans such as the water transport plans, the plans for sand and gravel extraction from the Danube or any other project undertaken on the Danube. There are 10 countries in this project grouped by work packages. Depending on their experience, each partner will be involved in one or two work packages. One package focuses on identifying habitats, another one focuses on conservation ex-situ, namely on fish stocks which are used for repopulation. Other packages are devoted to policies and databases including up-to-date information. Although the project has just started, we managed to achieve some things such as a draft habitat-identification manual. We have also started to analyse the existing policies and we are currently drafting a report on these policies.



    Also as part of this project, on April 18, in Isaccea, Tulcea county, action was taken to repopulate the Danube with sturgeon, more precisely with Russian sturgeon: “The event was actually a demonstration; we did not actually replace the extinct fish individuals. We released around 1,500 baby sturgeons that were marked and that will be monitored, to see their behaviour in the Danube on their way to the Black Sea and how long they stay in the feeding areas. Repopulating actions will also take place in Hungary where a smaller number of sturgeons will be released. The repopulating actions will be resumed next year.



    Romania also has sturgeon farms. One kg of sturgeon is 9.5 Euros and caviar costs between 127.6 Euros and 212.7 Euros per 100 grams. (translation by L. Simion)

  • Social projects in Bucharest’s Ferentari district

    Social projects in Bucharest’s Ferentari district

    Ferentari, Bucharests poorest and most problematic district, is famous for the incidence of domestic violence, prostitution, drug consumption and trafficking, poverty and illiteracy. You may wonder what the chances are for the kids born and raised in this neighbourhood to have a normal life. Several social projects have been initiated, to help the ethnic Roma kids and adults alike in this neighbourhood.



    Ionuţ Oprea is an actor. Six years ago he volunteered to give acting lessons at the Alternative Education Club, a program run by the NGO called Policy Center for Roma and Minorities. The club was created for the children facing risk situations who are living in ghetto conditions in Ferentari district. It was simply by chance that Ionuţ Oprea came to be part of this program, and, in time, he managed to overcome cultural differences and get closer to these kids, for whom theatre has become a form of therapy.



    Ionuţ Oprea: “I came to the club with my own set of values, my knowledge and my education, and I discovered that for those people my values did not matter. These peoples world is a little upside down. In my social and cultural milieu, education is regarded as something natural, a good thing that helps one develop. But here, in this community, I had a really hard time trying to convince both the kids and their parents that education could be a solution, a way out of their difficulties. Honestly, I am not sure that I have managed to do this. All I can do is show up at the club every day and tell them the same things over and over again. Nobody can guarantee that I will succeed or that I will be able to change anything at all.



    Nevertheless, Ionuţ Opreas work has started to bear fruit, and his efforts are now getting confirmation:



    Ionuţ Oprea: “One of my greatest achievements is the case of Nicoleta. From the very beginning I noticed in her a different attitude towards life and even towards my work and myself, and that made me believe she could be a leader. I could see how the others related to her and how she related to them. I have the greatest expectations and hopes from her, she started to write, she is getting informed, she is composing music and has already started to write a theatre play. And she is just one example. There are other kids in the troupe that are now starting to discover certain skills and find their place within the troupe, after several years of work. One of them acts as a technical director, another one is in charge of the posters and image, one is responsible for maintaining discipline at rehearsals. All of them are discovering their roles within the troupe. And this encourages me to go ahead with the project.



    Nicoleta Ghiţă, one of the promising young girls in the troupe coordinated by Ionuţ Oprea, is 18, and she had already started taking acting classes when Ionuţ joined the project in Ferentari district. As I child she felt that theatre was her passion and she proved her talent on several occasions. She has experienced some very difficult moments in her childhood and has had a job ever since she was 15:



    Nicoleta Ghiţă: “I can now say that I feel accomplished, because I have evolved quite a lot. I have grown from a nasty child who didnt like anybody and whom nobody liked, into a friendly person who can make friends and acquaintances easily. I have come to like people! And that is quite a change for me. When I see that Ionuţ is proud of me, I also feel proud. For 3 or 4 months he kept insisting that I should take up storytelling and eventually I did that. And I realized that THAT was the thing for me, that I could best express myself by means of storytelling. I am also passionate about music and I would like to study both music and theatre.



    Daniela Vlăsceanu is 34 and she has 3 kids. She was born and raised in Ferentari district. For more than 8 years she has been involved in helping people in need, and in June 2016 she contributed to the setting up of a community centre in the neighbourhood. She organises recreational activities with children, she helps them with their homework, organises parties and collects donations. Now she wants to collect money to take the kids to summer camp. She works with around 25 children aged between 6 and 12, and she plans to get them through high school and even faculty.



    The community centre is also open for adults. Many of them dont even have ID papers. Some of them have kids who are on drugs. But their main problem is, of course, poverty:



    Daniela Vlăsceanu: “Due to poverty, they cannot pay health insurance, cannot go to a doctor or to hospital. They have no income whatsoever and many of them are sick. I have not changed and I will not be able to change Ferentari district entirely. But each and every one of us can make a small contribution. Thanks to our efforts, 5 old people now receive food once a week with the support of another organization. Helping them with food or with identity papers is really something, because ID papers can help them apply for medical assistance or for a pension.



    Daniela also told us that, as of late, several NGOs have been running various projects in Ferentari district dealing in drug abuse counselling and help for obtaining ID papers. But what would Ferentari district need for a major facelift?



    Daniela Vlăsceanu: “Well, I dont know where to start. First of all, jobs for the people in the neighbourhood, and new schools, because the existing ones are all run-down. The district also needs better trained teachers, because the children in Ferentari dont learn much in school. And obviously, healthcare units. A hospital would be great, but that is wishful thinking.

  • Public-private partnership in infrastructure development in Romania

    Public-private partnership in infrastructure development in Romania

    Despite daily political scandals involving the countrys president Klaus Iohannis supported by the right wing opposition, on the one hand, and the ruling coalition formed by the Social Democratic Party and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats on the other, in Bucharest the Government carries on, minding its business. At least this is what the deputy prime-minister Viorel Stefan stated on Tuesday, when he presented the strategic projects that are to be commenced shortly, based on the new legislation on public-private partnership.



    Essentially, the government plans to build three motorways, to modernize 15 hospitals and to build a large medical compound. But lets see what the government means when talking about motorways. The first one will link the city of Ploiesti, in the south, to Brasov, in the centre. A second one will connect Targu Neamt and Iasi to Ungheni, in the Republic of Moldova, while in the south a third one will make the connection between Bucharest, Craiova, Drobeta Turnu Severin and Lugoj.



    Viorel Stefan stated that the 100 km long eastern motorway will also include a bridge over Prut River, which will connect it with the road infrastructure in the neighboring Republic of Moldova. The one in the south is aimed to help develop tourism, mainly because it will be connected to the section that exists already in the south, known as the ‘Sun Motorway, which links the capital city to the Black Sea Coast.



    Viorel Stefan: “The South Motorway, 550 km long, is an important project for many investors, who have already invested quite heavily in the area, more specifically in Craiova and the surroundings. Lets not forget that this motorway will help increase the tourist potential in the Danube Gorges. Moreover, it will secure the link with Serbia, Bulgaria and the 4th Pan-European Corridor in Lugoj.



    The government also plans to modernize 15 hospitals owned by the Romanian Freight Company and managed by the Transport Ministry and to build the Carol Davila healthcare compound, on some 300 hectares in Bucharest. The compound will include the Republican Hospital, with a capacity of 3,000 beds and 37 operating theatres. Also, a Medical School and student dorms will be built, as well as residential and shopping facilities for the staff, parking lots and a hotel for those who accompany the patients.



    All the projects presented on Tuesday and dubbed ‘strategic will require substantial expenses, of 15 to 20 billion Euros. The works are to start next year, and scheduled to complete in five years for the motorways, three years for the Republican Hospital and seven years for the Carol Davila compound. The Government, the deputy prime-minister Viorel Stefan also said, is determined to make up for the decade-long delays in the building of the countrys infrastructure.


    (translated by: Mihaela Ignatescu)

  • One Hot Meal, on the Table and Online

    One Hot Meal, on the Table and Online


    For homeless people, for old single people, for poor children, a hot meal a day, or even a week, may be just a dream. In order to help any and all these people, a group of volunteers from Cluj started in 2013 the project named One Hot Meal. Today, 5 years later, the idea was taken over by groups in other cities, offering 900 weekly meals for people who either cannot afford a hot meal or cannot make their own.



    Here is Raimonda Boian, one of the project initiators: “The project has been growing nicely, and the target group and beneficiaries are people from all social categories who lack food. At the soup kitchen I run we cater to people coming to Museum Square in Cluj-Napoca to beg for food. They are homeless people, but also people who have a home, but dont have food. Were not social workers, we dont make social research, we dont question the people who come seeking food. Whats important is that they get fed.”



    Even though One Hot Meal is an independent project, it would not be possible without collaboration with local authorities and the Social Assistance Directorates. Along the years, this collaboration spread from Cluj to Constanta to Adjud, Satu-Mare and Bucharest. The food is procured entirely by donation. Cluj is the place that has the most food distribution points, manned exclusively by volunteers from all walks of life.



    Here is Raimonda Boian: “At the soup kitchen I coordinate in Cluj, I have volunteer teams that registered for up until January 2019. I am sorry and I know I will cause frustration when I have to respond to demands, because I can only run registrations in January next year. Our volunteers also enjoy cooking. Even if they dont know much about it, they still want to participate. I believe its attractive. The activity in itself is pleasant, and the volunteers are not too busy, they make one sandwich at the most.”



    In Bucharest, the One Hot Meal project was implemented by one of the volunteers, Monica Abagiu: “I took over the project in October. I registered as a volunteer in May 2017, then I took over the coordination in Bucharest together with Raluca Apostol. Id long wanted to get into a project like this. I picked One Hot Meal because we like cooking, and also the idea that we could help someone. Also, we had been volunteering in other places before.”



    Monica Abagiu volunteers in addition to various other activities in her life. She said she doesnt have a hard time blending into her existence being a volunteer for the two places where she volunteers for the project. One of them is Cantina Omnis in sector 4, a disadvantaged area in Bucharest. The other is in Ferentari, another problem area in the capital city.



    Here is Monica Abagiu: “The other is a mobile soup kitchen, more precisely an ambulance with a kitchen in the courtyard of a school in Ferentari neighborhood. At Cantina Omnis, the beneficiaries are mostly adults, around 70 up to 100. They come here during the week, but we cook only at weekends. As for the school, we feed the children going there. We have joined Valeriu Nicolae and other volunteers who help children with homework, and we cook for them. We have lots of children with problems, social assistance cases. We have, as I said, between 70 and 100 beneficiaries. We cook there on Saturdays and Sundays.”



    Hot meals twice a week are so sought after by the needy that Monica Abagiu is thinking of expanding the project in other places in Bucharest. She may get help from an offshoot of the project, the ShareFood app.



    George Jiglău, one of the initiators of the project in Cluj, supported the creation of the app, which also aims at combating food waste. Here he is talking to us about it: “This is an app meant to facilitate communication between producers and distributors of food and a community in need of food. In the five years since weve been running the One Hot Meal project, first in Cluj, then in the other cities, we have also made contact with the donors. I am talking about the entities that have more food than they can sell, and this food many times gets thrown away, even though no one wants to throw food away. The app meets the two sides in the middle. It is useful for combating food waste, but it is also an easy-to-use instrument to help collaboration between potential donors and people who need these services.”



    The ShareFood app is aimed at legal persons: on the one hand, potential food donors, companies, and on the other, public institutions, NGOs or parishes that can distribute the food directly to beneficiaries. The creators of the application are two experts from Cluj, who wanted to get involved more deeply after they volunteered to cook as part of the project One Hot Meal. Today, almost two months away from the launch, the ShareFood app is available everywhere in the country, and already has dozens of active accounts, both of the donors and of the beneficiaries.